MRI scans allow doctors to look at the human brain without risky surgery.

It is often used for sports injuries that occur in the knee, hip, shoulder, elbow and wrist.

Have a look at the scan of a healthy brain and a scan of someone with Alzheimer’s disease.

Can you see where the brains look different?

 

 

 

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a way that doctors can find out what is going on inside you without having to operate. MRI gives very clear and detailed pictures of the body.

It is also used for looking at the heart, lungs and blood vessels.

 The scanner is really a giant cube that has a huge magnet inside it. The magnet makes the water in parts of the body give off radio waves that are picked up by the computer. The computer uses this information to make an image on a screen. The patient lies on a table that moves inside the scanner and the doctor can see the body image on a screen.

 Unlike other imaging techniques MRI does not use ionizing radiation. Instead, radiofrequency waves are focused on protons of the hydrogen nucleus, in a strong magnetic field. 

The magnetic field cause the protons to get ‘excited’ and then ‘relax’. These changes cause the protons to emit radio waves that a computer can process to form an image on a screen. The magnets used in the scanner are so strong that no metal objects are allowed in the scan room, as they can become a dangerous projectile. For this reason people with pacemakers, clips in the brain or fragments of metal in their eyes can not use the scanner.

 

 

 

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